


Wrong Side of the Tracks

by ossseous (ozean)



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst, Child Abuse, Crimes & Criminals, Foster Care, Guns, Haphephobia, Leonard-centric, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rating May Change, anger problems
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-11 01:23:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7870042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozean/pseuds/ossseous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lewis is off to jail once again but Leonard is determined to make the best of it this time and give Lisa the life she deserves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone is aged down a bit, by maybe 5-6 years? I’m not entirely sure of the exact canon ages but for reference, Len is late 20s/early 30s, Lisa late teens, Barry is early 20s, Micks is late 30s.
> 
> TW for this chapter: mentions of past child abuse and undernourishment from neglect.

“Why the hell are you calling me?” He nearly had to yell over the sounds of the light rail rattling down the tracks, hurtling away from the city.  On the other end of the line Lisa remained quiet.  If he knew her well enough, and he liked to think he did, he knew his tone was short enough to make her hang up on him out of spite. 

But she stayed on the line, which usually meant she had something important to say.  When she did speak up, she gritted it out through clenched teeth.  “They shut the water off, Lenny.”

Leonard groaned and resisted the urge to smack the phone against his forehead in front of all the other commuters.  To lump him in with the other commuters would really be disservice though.  Either to them or himself, he didn’t know.  Most of them held briefcases, tapped away on their phones and listened to their podcasts, did anything they could so that they didn’t have to acknowledge people like Leonard, who just so happened to look like the type of person that might actually live on public transportation.  The types that were likely heading out of the city to their nicer homes in the suburbs and not to some rundown trailer park that made the inner city ghettos look nice and homey and safe.  Leonard wasn’t of the same stock, they knew it, he knew it, everyone knew it.  “I’ll sort it out,” he said, pulling the phone away.  
“Also,” she cut him off before he could hang up, and with a sigh he put the phone back up to his ear.  As well as he knew Lisa, she knew him better.  “The police picked Lewis up.”

“What?”  
She didn’t sound very bothered as she repeated it like she was regaling him with some mundane tale of how her day went.  “They came by this morn—”

“No, I mean,” he said, pausing to collect his thoughts.  Lewis getting picked up was perhaps one of the few things that could fill him with equal measures of relief and anxious dread.  “Never mind.  I’m already on my way back home.  If you have to use the bathroom, just go to Mick’s.”

He hung up without saying goodbye, because that was how they did things the Snart household.

* * *

 

The stop on the rail was about a five-minute walk from the trailer park where they lived.  That would have been very beneficial for Leonard if he didn’t have to take a ten-minute detour to avoid a neighborhood block that the Snart name was not particularly popular in.  That was mostly thanks to his father, only partially thanks to him.

When he finally arrived he let the screen door rattle shut behind him, only to find their single wide unsurprisingly empty.  If Lisa ever found an opportunity to head over next door, she usually took it gleefully.  With a sigh, he tested the little kitchen’s faucet to confirm the water was actually off, watching as only a couple of drops dripped into the sink before the faucet shuddered and stopped completely.

Leonard had to take a deep breath then and work hard to bury back his frustration.  The same kind of frustration that made swinging out and hitting something, or pelting something off the counter, or kicking a jagged hole in the wall all seem very appealing. 

He couldn’t even bring himself to be surprised the water company had shut it off.  Instead he was just angry at himself.  The month before he knew he would be running short and all but begged and coerced and bribed Lewis to take care of the water bill out of desperation.  It was almost like he was incapable of learning the first and foremost lesson of being Lewis Snart’s child: Never trust Lewis Snart.

The door creaked open before slamming shut with a sharp crack.  Leonard made a mental note to adjust the spring, one he knew he’d forget by morning when he was shutting off his alarm and getting ready for his next shift and decidedly forgetting everything about the previous day. 

When he turned, he found Lisa lingering in the living room, waiting for him to speak up or maybe just waiting for him to do something that wasn’t standing in the middle of the kitchen with a clenched fist.  She was always a little more cautious when he was angry.  Her apprehension always bloomed a sense of dread and self-disgust in his chest, but he didn’t blame her.  She might not have been old enough to see the back of Lewis’s hand as many times as he had, but being the recipient of their father’s loathing even once was enough to ruin the hardest kid.  
“So they took him away?” He asked in lieu of a greeting.  Rolling the tension from his shoulders, he shuffled over to their cramped living room which consisted of an old couch they got at the goodwill when he was ten years old, a coffee table they salvaged from the side of the road and a TV they jacked from some person’s house.  Dropping down onto the couch where he slept most nights, he left room for Lisa to join him.

“Yeah, this morning,” she grunted, plopping down next to him.

“You should’ve called when it was happening.”

“It didn’t really seem worth the minutes,” she said.

And really it wasn’t.  It wasn’t the first time he had been taken by the police and he doubted it would be the last.  It just meant another visit from a social worker, and he wasn’t sure if they would let him keep being her guardian if he couldn’t even pay to keep the water on.

He ran a hand over his face, scrubbing it over his short hair.  He knew the water bill would be at least twenty, and an extra couple dollars to get them to come out and turn it back on.  He could cover that with what was in his pockets, but that left nothing for groceries until he got his next paycheck at the end of the week.  
“How much you got?” He asked, assuming she knew what he meant.  Which she apparently did because she got up and fetched her wallet from her room without a word.  The coins tumbled out loudly, a couple rolling off as she snapped it open and upturned it over the coffee table with a little too much drama.  He emptied his own pockets, dropping the crumpled bills that made up his left over cash and tips along with his meager spare change in with Lisa’s offering.

Lisa counted out the bills while he painstakingly separated the coins, only to learn that between them they didn’t even have thirty bucks.

The next step in the process went unsaid as they both started to scour the trailer.  Lisa took the couch, pulling up the cushions and checking every crack and nook and cranny.  Leonard checked all the surfaces, digging through every jar and dish and counter that might yield a carelessly lost penny or dime.

Reconvened with their loot, they made it up to thirty.  Which, no matter how much he didn’t like it, would have to be enough.

“Okay,” he stacked the bills, folding them into his pocket before scooping up the sloppy, tilting stacks of coins and depositing them in her hands.  “I’ll pay the water bill.  You go to the coin machine.  Get some potted meat and bread and,” he paused, trying to decide how far the change would stretch.  “Toilet paper.”

“I need more tampons,” she said, frowning down at her hand.  It was like they were both trying their hardest not to think about how the coins in her hand were starting to look more and more meager.

“Fine, fuck.”  He made the rounds again, just in case he could come up with more change.  Lisa didn’t even bother to help, likely realizing that it was pointless.  She wasn’t really wrong though, he came back with a grand total of fifteen cents.

Their options were looking thinner and thinner, and Leonard was near to breaking down and going over to Mick’s to ask for a loan.  That was something he really, _really_ , did not want to do.  Nothing really elicited revulsion in him as much as owing someone something, but it was exacerbated particularly in the case of money.  But Lisa, shoving the coins in the pocket of her jeans, stomped off into Lewis’s room.

“I have an idea,” she yelled over her shoulder and a minute later she dropped a little cardboard cigar box on the coffee table in front of him.

“Where the hell did you find that?” He knew exactly what it was.  But he didn’t want to touch it let alone open it.  He didn’t really know how Lisa found it so easy to when just the sight of the thing had his heart beating a little too quickly.

“Saw him stashing it like right before the cops where knocking on the door.  He hides it under the nightstand like a freak.”

Leonard dropped back down on the couch, glaring at that little box.  Reaching out tentatively, he scraped his thumb against the little tack for a moment, tried to gather the courage to just open it up.  It had such a strong smell that readily added onto his hesitation.  Even from where he sat he could breathe in that sharp combination of cash and cigars, the kind of smell that seemed to follow Lewis around. 

It reminded him of one too many beatings, one too many lessons, one too many nights worried that would be the night Lewis finally got fed up and killed his two biggest disappointments. 

With a steadied breath, he glanced up at Lisa.  She was only a teenager, only a kid, the only person on the planet that trusted in him, who needed him.  He opened the box.

His stomach churned at the sight.  The tightly wound rolls of hundred dollar bills, mixed in with neatly creased and folded twenties and fifties, the faces on the bills peering out at him with accusatory and yet impassive stares.  He didn’t let himself get sick thinking about how much money laid in that box and how much they could not use it to fix all their problems.  There was enough in that box to get a nicer place, an apartment maybe, pay rent and bills for a couple months, enough to eat regular meals like regular human beings.

But it wasn’t an option.  He didn’t want to even think about what Lewis would do to both of them if they did touch it.

He sucked in a breath, almost slammed the lid shut, but he decided to take out two twenties.  It was a gambit, but he figured he could return that much before Lewis got back.  Just as long as no one posted his bail, which Leonard somehow doubted.  Of course Leonard mostly wished that Lewis would rot in jail for the rest of his life.  But he doubted that as well.  His sentences always seemed to keep about as well as month old milk.

With forty extra bucks in their pool, surviving the next week felt much more doable.  Yet, he didn’t like the feeling at all.  He let the lid shut, making sure the little tack was in place before sliding it over in Lisa’s direction.  She took it back to Lewis’s room, carefully replacing it in its hiding spot.

Once she returned, he handed her a twenty which she added to her pocket of coins.  “Okay, get as many groceries as you can with that.  We’ll use the rest later if we have to.”

She nodded and like some kind of soldier off to war, she grabbed her wallet and her discarded purse and trudged out the door without another word.

He wished he could stay for a minute.  Two shifts at two different places across the city from each other was enough to get him teetering into the general direction of passing straight out on the couch like he usually did when he got home.  But he knew the water company wasn’t open indefinitely, and he really did not want to pay the fine they charged for turning the water back on after hours.

So he shuffled out the door not long after her, and only lingered a moment out of habit to make sure Lisa got to the main road safely.  It was something he had done since she had started school and considering the years between them, they always had to part ways.  It wasn’t necessarily that he didn’t think she could take care of herself, but more like he knew if anything did happen, it’d be his responsibility.  He didn’t know if he could handle the guilt of her getting hurt.  He couldn’t even handle the guilt of her half starving every month. 

He only turned in the opposite direction once she turned the corner and strolled out of sight.  Scaling the privacy fence that surrounded the trailer park meant cutting the walk to the water company nearly in half and as he jogged across the train yard, he just kept thinking, hoping, that he’d get home before dark and could get something resembling a full night’s sleep for once.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: mildly haphephobic character getting touched

They perfected the routine when they were younger.  Of everything Lewis taught them in their years growing up, how to successfully shoplift was perhaps one of the more useful things.  Lisa had a particular talent of looking innocuous and innocent, like something about her made people eager to trust her.  It helped that she even wore an outfit for the occasion, and it fooled just about everyone.  Only Leonard really knew it was less of an outfit, more of a costume.

It consisted of what he felt certain was the exact uniform polo and khaki slacks from some religious private school on the other side of the city.  And she wore them well, like a natural, like she just got home from hours of rigorous, college bound study.  Of course Leonard did not ask how she obtained the uniform and Lisa did not volunteer the information.

When she put on that outfit, it was like she took on some kind of role.  She bounced from display to display of whatever shop they were lifting from, mulling over her choices with deliberate and deep thought.  Like maybe she was trying to remember what her friends wanted her to pick up, or maybe she wanted a snack to study with after school and just couldn’t make up her mind.  But Lisa, as much as a loner as her big brother, did not have friends beyond him and Mick.  And Leonard seriously doubted she had ever studied once in her life.

Most importantly, the performance—believable enough that sometimes even Leonard could get swept up in it—worked.  Sometimes, for a brief second, he could almost see it.  As if that girl was the kind of person Lisa could’ve been in another life, one where circumstance did not do everything in its power to beat her down.

But, Leonard had his own role to play.  He’d linger outside, wait a couple minutes so it didn’t look like they were together, and then he’d enter.  If he was theatrical about it at all, it was only because Lisa was, and he wasn’t one to be outplayed. 

He would let the bell that hung above the door ring furiously at his entrance.  The old man, and it was always some old man, lounged behind the counter in sleepy boredom.  Perhaps hoping, or even waiting, for some other equally old man to come along and chat him up about whatever it was old men talked about.  Where he seemed all too willing to buy into Lisa’s little charade of teenage innocence, he was just as quick to assume Leonard was there either to steal from him or hold the place up.

So that was the hook.  Lisa, covertly stuffing bags of chips in her giant purse, meandered through the short aisles of the convenience store while Leonard perused the walls of overpriced drinks.  With every step, he could feel the cashier’s eyes on his back, like some kind of brand was burnt into the back of his head, demarcating his status as yet another youth wasting his life as a petty criminal.

Not that he was even that young.

Leonard did his best not to acknowledge Lisa, but his eyes did wander over to her on occasion.  He didn’t think of it as some sense of brotherly protectiveness.  He knew Lisa could handle herself.  After all, she wasn’t some knobby kneed eight-year-old, stuffing cans of beans in her back pack with shaking hands.  But she was still young, which meant what was once fear and apprehension got replaced over the years with a nice hefty measure of hubris.

And sure enough, he looked over to find her fighting back her barely concealed amusement as it threated to crack out of her in her usual telling chuckle.  He rolled his eyes, let the freezer door he held open unnecessarily long slam shut loud enough to get her attention.  It must have worked because when he looked at her once more she was rolling her eyes at him, and maybe for a minute he regretted even exposing her to that move since she seemed to abuse it as much as he did.  But she got the message and fixed herself with a more serious expression as she wandered, slowly and deliberately, closer to the door.

That was his cue.  He started to rummage as obnoxiously loudly as he could through one of the displays.  Looking up meaningfully, he caught the cashier’s eyes long enough to make it seem like he was waiting for an opportunity.  From his peripheral he watched Lisa slip out the door, the bell barely even making a sound before she was outside and smirking at him just beyond the glass windows.

Leonard got ready to make his own escape, dropping the mini bag of spicy peanuts he had picked up not a moment before, when a hand clamped down on his shoulder.

He jolted just a little at the touch.  But that spike of fear, even if only a brief one, washed out into a ticking anger.  He managed to tamp down the urge to break the fingers that gripped into his shoulder.  Mostly because he could almost see the scene play out vividly.  The light crack as the delicate long bones of the hand snapped in his grip.  The owner’s resultant screams of agony as he shoved the limp, crushed hand back at its owner.  The cashier calling the police in terror at the suddenly and unexpected display of violence he just witnessed.  Leonard making a run for it before he ended up with an assault charge and a bunk in a jail cell with his waste of a father.

So he sucked in a breath instead, only letting it out after he turned toward the perpetrator.  He glared down at the hand that continued to squeeze at his shoulder in what may have been some attempt at friendliness, Leonard was never quite sure with those things.

“And why, may I ask, are you touching me?”  He asked evenly and the guy snatched his hand away, cradling it to his chest as though Leonard burned it with the power of thought and will alone.

“Yeah, sorry about that, forgot…” The guy looked nervous and fidgety and only vaguely familiar to Leonard.  Just another face among dozens that he knew belonged to Lewis’s crew of dispensable accessories.  He shuffled back away from Leonard, nearly knocking a shelf of batteries over.  “Just meant to see if you heard the news…”

“What news?” He asked, resisting the urge to just walk straight home and scrub his shoulder clean.  The guy may not have touched his skin, but he could still feel it through the material of his shirt, like a million little pinpricks that lingered long after the touch was gone.

“About your dad.  He got five years,” the guy said, grimacing as though the news might actually bother Leonard, get him angry or upset or make him lash out.  But it was quite the contrary…

He bolted out the door, the little bell barely surviving the ordeal as he jogged on past Lisa where she sat patiently on the curb, waiting for him.

“What the hell?” She shouted after him. 

He didn’t stop and he didn’t respond though, just rounded the corner without a glance behind.  There was a good two miles back to the trailer park as they followed a general rule to not lift from stores they actually used.  It was more beneficial to cultivate a friendlier type relationship with the owner of their corner mart and doing so gave them an advantage.  After all, if they came to her on a good day, maybe after she made a couple bucks from the lotto, she might be willing to round the total down to the nearest dollar. 

But no matter how close or far away it was, he got back under fifteen minutes.  It turned out he was a little more athletic when he was properly motivated.

By the time Lisa got back to the trailer, angry and huffing and sweating, he had already sprinted up the steps and through the door, and making a beeline for Lewis’s room, started pulling the blankets off of his bed.

“What the hell happened?” She asked, dropping her bag on the floor as loudly as she could.  “Running with that thing was a pain in the ass—what are you doing?”

“Lewis got five years,” he said by way of explanation, yanking the fitted sheet off and tossing it in her direction.  She made a disgusted face as it hit her in the chest and fell to her feet.  But then it clicked and a smile spread so easily that even Leonard let himself smile back for a change. 

Five years wasn’t a promise of anything.  But it was the longest sentence he had gotten yet.  If anything, it meant they at least had some time.  Maybe a couple of months of freedom, time to loosen the tension from their shoulders without the ever present fear that had long since been etched into their bones.

Lisa tossed him a clean set of sheets from their little linen closet, sliding the accordion door shut with a loud click before scooping up the bag and heading to put their “groceries” away.  Once he had the set on, he collapsed on the mattress with an appreciative groan.  He couldn’t even remember the last time he got to sleep on a real mattress, something with actual springs, not made of rotting ten-year-old foam and rough upholstery fabric.

There were plenty of issues he knew were soon to arrive from all of it.  Even if Lewis was worthless, he did pay some of the bills, even only if it benefited him.  So that meant Leonard needed another job to pick up the slack.  That was never easy considering his education consisted of a grand total of two years of high school.

But he didn’t let himself dwell on those things.  Instead he let out a heavy sigh, a tight breath he felt like he had been holding for months, and let himself relax.  If only a little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was dreading this chapter, and I knew it was going to be the one I hated doing the most because it felt very transitional. BUT, I ended up liking it in the end after I just made myself do it? I'm really enjoying exploring Leonard and Lisa's relationship.
> 
> Anyways, next chapter should be longer and we should be getting to see Barry and Iris ahhh.


End file.
